Lady of the Lock

MAUREEN Shaw, who sadly died peacefully in her sleep on Saturday 17th March, in her mid 70's will be known to many boaters by name and thousands more as the 'Lady of the Lock' having lived in the Lock Keeper's Cottage on Wardle Lock in Middlewich, writes David King.

This is the first lock lock on the Middlewich Branch of the Shroppie. To many hirers Wardle Lock would be their introduction to locks, and Maureen would often be out, helping people through, with Brian Holmes' photograph showing her outside the lock cottage.

Benefit of her advice

Not always suffering fools gladly and not afraid to tell them so, even very experienced boaters got the benefit of her advice sometimes! She must also have been the bane of British Waterways at times because if she saw or was told something was amiss on 'her' canal, she would always say "I'll ring them up now"! Or often already had. But on the whole a well respected true character.

She was also well known for her talks to canal and other groups about her working life on the canals. She had a very difficult early life, as she told. She was 'given away' by her mother as a small child to a boating family somewhere on the BCN, at about the age of nine.

Did not want her

This family also decided they did not want her, and she was taken on, it is said, outside the Cheshire Cheese in Middlewich by Danny Jinks. The Jinks' were a well known boating family and they took her in, and brought her up on their boats as a member of the family.

She later married Jack Shaw, another working boatman and they worked a motor together for many years. Jack Shaw died about 20 years ago. When they left the water, they lived for a time at the side of the Wolverhampton Flight, before moving to Wardle Lock.

Taken for a trip

Even in more recent years when boaters have taken her for a trip on their boat along the Branch, they report that you almost needed a crowbar to get her off the tiller, once she was offered 'a steer'.

Maureen, until deteriorating health prevented her, would be out at all hours helping boaters through the lock and was for many years a huge source of towpath news and gossip. She was also in the best boating tradition a passer-on of messages and information.

Would have heard

You often only had to ask if she knew where so and so, or such and such a boat was and she would usually have heard where they were in the last week, even if they had not passed through the lock and were miles away.

She did, it's true to say, have her 'fall-outs' with people over various things over the years but Maureen was well respected and loved, and I am sure will be missed by many no matter which side you were on. I'm sure many people's thoughts will be with her family at the moment.